Will Benicio Del Toro be the Star Wars Episode 8 villain?

Benicio Del Toro has been offered the role of the villain in Rian Johnson’s forthcoming Star Wars Episode VIII, according to Variety.

Joaquin Phoenix is also being considered for the part.

While the role in question has not been named, and few details are known, it seems likely that the character may be one of several villains in the films.

Many fans expect that Adam Driver’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens bad guy Kylo Ren will feature in all three films, as a Darth Vader-type main antagonist, while Gwendoline Christie’s character, a chrome stormtrooper named Captain Phasma, is also rumoured to have a bigger part in Episodes VIII and VIIII.

Del Toro, who won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in 2000’s Traffic, recently starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. He’s also no stranger to playing bad guys in science fiction/space movies: in Marvel’s 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy, the actor appeared as a villain called The Collector.

The seventh instalment in the Star Wars series, JJ Abrams’s The Force Awakens, is released this December. It will be followed by Gareth Edwards’s standalone spin-off, Star Wars: Rogue One, released in December 2016, before Star Wars episode VIII is released on May 26 2017.

Disney is planning a total of three spin-offs, including Rogue One and a currently untitled Han Solo prequel (directed by The Lego Movie’s Christopher Miller and Phil Lord), as well as three sequels: The Force Awakens (Episode VII), Episode VIII and Episode IX .

As well as directing Episode VIII, Johnson, who is known for his dark 2012 time travel tale Looper, will write the screenplay for Episode IX.